JLL to lose managements as DEXUS wins office towers

Global agency JLL will lose the management of 22 office towers after the
DEXUS
Property Group takes full control of the Commonwealth Property Office Fund.

A DEXUS spokesman said the group planned to move the management of the majority of the new office towers to the DEXUS platform. JLL’s head of property and asset management in Australia, Richard Fennell, acknowledged that the move meant the loss of 22 managements.

In recent years JLL has also lost some long-held office tower managements as the GPT Group brought operations in-house. But Mr Fennell said that the trend was towards more ­outsourcing of management than the shift in-house. In the past year, JLL has gained 137 new managements, many of them for new foreign owners.

The changes among Australia’s commercial owners have also created opportunities for outsourcing, with Stockland, GDI, Shopping Centres Australasia and the new Fort Street funds management business all outsourcing some managements.

In the past five years, JLL has boosted its management in Australia from 8 million square metres to 8.5 million square metres.

The dramatic growth has been across Asia-Pacific as a whole, where the amount of space under management by JLL has near doubled to 100 million sq m in the past five years.